By now it is clear the federal Liberals are in some difficulty with the public. Much excitement attended that Ipsos poll earlier this week showing them trailing the Conservatives for the first time, and by a not inconsequential margin: 38 to 33. But it’s not just Ipsos.

Forum Research, which gives the Tories a 12-point lead, may be an outlier, but Nanos’s latest four-week rolling poll shows the Liberal lead has shrunk to less than four points from eight points in December; Abacus Data, similarly, now has them just three points ahead, the narrowest margin they have found since the election.

Overall, the CBC’s Poll Tracker website now puts the two parties more or less level, based on a weighted average of the polls, at 36 per cent. Contrast that with the Liberals’ first year in office, when they maintained a lead of as much as 20 points, or even their second, when they led by eight to 10. Something is clearly up.

The reason is not hard to find, nor is it unusual: the prime minister’s personal approval rating has declined markedly. To be sure, he remains the Liberals’ chief asset: Nanos still shows 40 per cent of Canadians put Justin Trudeau as their preferred prime minister. Sixty per cent say he “has the qualities of a good political leader.”

But the value of that asset is rapidly degrading. Abacus reports that “for the first time since before he was elected, as many people have a negative view of the Prime Minister as have a positive view.” As late as November 2016, the positives led the negatives by 33 points; two months ago he was still 16 points to the good.

It isn’t that Scheer has set the world on fire since becoming leader; still less has NDP leader Jagmeet Singh. Both Nanos and Abacus show them lagging well behind Trudeau on every measure: preferred prime minister, qualities of a good leader, positive vs negative impressions.

It’s a matter of Trudeau’s decline, not his rivals’ rise.

This has to be worrying to Liberal strategists. Party leaders, especially prime ministers, are always critical to a party’s appeal. But seldom has any party or any government invested as heavily in the persona and image of the leader — all those magazine covers, all those viral videos, and yes, all those selfies — or with such outstanding returns: for two years after the election he was untouchable, as were they.

But, live by the socks, die by the socks: should the public sour on the leader, the party is in big trouble. Sure enough, polls show the decline in Trudeau’s fortunes mirrored in the party’s. Ipsos shows the government with a 46-54 per cent approve-disapprove rate (Abacus has it 42-41) which doesn’t sound too bad. But drill down into those numbers and the picture darkens alarmingly: just nine per cent now “strongly approve” of the government’s performance, versus 28 per cent who “strongly disapprove.”

If the India visit accelerated the decline, it is also true that the prime minister's appeal has been fading for some time

All of this, with the country at peace, separatism dormant, unemployment at a 40-year low. The prime minister, moreover, has basked for two years in the approval of the world’s media, and benefits by constant comparison to the ogre to the south.

The immediate explanation for the prime minister’s cratering appeal is the recent official visit to India, conceded on all sides to have been a disaster. There’s no doubt this has taken its toll — Ipsos finds more than twice as many Canadians of the view that the visit was “negative for Canada-India relations” than the contrary.

But if the India visit accelerated the decline, it is also true that the prime minister’s appeal has been fading for some time. The India trip may have crystallized certain perceptions of him, but the ingredients have been evident for a while. People do not form impressions of a leader’s character and abilities instantaneously, but only as the result of an accumulation of incidents and impressions.

The Tories’ pre-election attempts to discredit Trudeau as “just not ready” failed in the light of a long campaign in which he persuaded increasing numbers of Canadians that he was. I don’t imagine many would have said he was much of a deep thinker — his worst moments are almost always when he tries to pretend he is — but people gave him credit for sincerity, personal decency, idealism, and a native political ability that seemed to grow throughout the campaign.

But now? Asked to name the first quality that came to mind, I suspect increasing numbers might be more inclined to mention his cynicism.

It may not be a coincidence, after all, that his support begins to erode in every poll in early 2017 — just after the decision to abandon electoral reform. Add to that the long list of other broken promises; the ethical lapses, from pay-for-play dinners with Chinese billionaires to vacations with the Aga Khan; and the bullying of Parliament, so reminiscent of the prime minister he replaced, and you have a recipe for disillusionment.

In which circumstances, the little things that seemed so charming at first, all those dashing gestures and glam photo ops, might well come to seem, at first frivolous, then irritating — an impression of unseriousness compounded by a series of bungled foreign-policy excursions of which the India trip was only the last.

Throw in, last, the government’s increasing fixation on pursuing its own ideological hobbyhorses, with ever greater fanaticism, at a time when unease over the economy is growing, of which the blind complacency of the recent budget is a vivid example. What was merely irritating now looks positively dangerous.

Can the Liberals regain the advantage? Of course: the election is still 18 months away. So long as the economy continues on its present pace, voters tend to leave governments in place. But if it should not, the Liberals might wish for their present popularity.

When my assistant said there was a call from the White House, I picked up, said 'Hello' and started to ask if this was a prank

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